Abstract:

The changes in society caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have directly affected several areas, one of which is undoubtedly the education, in which it is possible to identify parts that have been affected more and which have been affected less than others. The domain that had to transform very quickly compared to the long-established effective teaching methods is undoubtedly mathematics. Here, teachers often relied on proven means, such as pencil and paper, or blackboard and chalk. When solving mathematical problems, it is necessary to give students space for creative thinking, to create a stimulating environment so that they are not limited by other influences that would transfer students' attention to formal or technical aspects of teaching, which happened in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the main features of a stimulating environment in mathematics is the possibility of communication, argumentation, and cooperation and collaboration.

As part of the teaching of mathematics, we also try to create a stimulating environment at the Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Education, Palacký University Olomouc in the Czech republic. We are looking for various approaches that would help students (prospective teachers) with their preparation in the field of mathematics didactics and at the same time give them useful inspiration for further practice. For this reason, we looked for a way to break down the transmissive concept of teaching typically of most online teaching, where the teacher speaks at best to several faces, at worst only to a blank monitor without an image.

The paper aims to reflect on the cooperation in mathematics didactics classes at our faculty. A total of 54 teachers of the 4th year of Elementary School Teacher Program took part in the research. Their task was to cooperate or collaborate in 6-member groups during solving a non-standard problem named Mosaic and to reflect their collaboration in a short questionnaire immediately after work. As part of the evaluation of metacognitive strategies, they had to estimate the success of the individual and team solutions and the difficulty of the task.

The results show that students positively evaluate collaborative and cooperative elements in a given way of teaching, working in a group increases their perception of self-efficacy and the success of solutions. The set teaching model can thus be recommended for the preparation of prospective elementary school teachers within their undergraduate training.

Keywords:

Mathematical problem, prospective primary teacher, problem-solving, collaboration, cooperation, online teaching, stimulating teaching environment.